Gardening, nature, arts and conservation

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The garden looked lovely this week in the snow, here’s some pics including tracks of a furry foxy visitor that came in the gate overnight. Not much gardening has been happening this week but we’ve been enjoying the view!

Traditionally at this time of year, people’s thoughts turn to the end of winter and the coming of spring. We’ll be doing our bit to encourage a good harvest year in the North Edinburgh Arts garden by holding our annual apple wassail on

Friday 26th Jan, 2.30-4.00pm

We’ll have wassailing songs, mulled apple juice and other refreshments and of course, the wassail parade around the garden to scare off evil spirits and encourage a good fruit harvest for the coming year.

We had a great afternoon wassailing in our orchard space a few weeks ago.

An apple wassail is a traditional festival from the West Country, where you scare away the evil spirits from your orchard to encourage a good year’s harvest. There are traditional songs sung but it also includes making lots of noise, banging things, whistles (one tradition is to fire your gun in the sky!) The fruit rees are also decorated and hung with bread, and toasts (with cider traditionally, but we used mulled apple juice) are made to the health of the tree and their roots soaked with cider.

We had our very own Timebank Temptations leading the singing – many thanks to them for their help.

We’ve received three year funding to carry on the garden project from the Big Lottery Fund! This will allow us to keep on doing what we’ve been doing for the last 3 years as well as supporting outdoor and environmental activities throughout the area. Great news! We’ll also be recruiting for a gardener and increasing the amount of youth work provision for the garden.

And here’s a pic of the garden in summer to remind you of what it’s like on a glorious day:

We’re excited to be heading off on our first beach day of the autumn/winter next Saturday, 15th October, in partnership with Zoo Arts Extra. Artists Alice and Morag will be on hand to lead great creative activities on the beach, plus the usual fire, food, sea and sand.

Book your place by dropping into NEA, calling 0131 315 2151 or e-mail garden@northedinburgharts.co.uk. More info on the flyer below:

We are absolutely thrilled to announce that the NEA garden project has been awarded three year funding from the Big Lottery Fund Scotland.

With the support of our fantastic community, we have transformed a piece of unused waste land into a magical, creative and inclusive community garden that is open to all. Following the Big Lottery Fund award we are looking forward to developing and building on the wonderful work that has been taking place since the garden opened in June 2014. More news on the activities and opportunities that this grant will bring to our community will follow soon.

Big Lottery Fund Scotland Chair, Maureen McGinn, said:

“I am delighted that North Edinburgh Arts has been successful in securing a Big Lottery Fund grant. The funding will make a big difference where it is needed most and I wish North Edinburgh Arts every success as it goes on to develop and expand its project for the benefit of their local community.